"Kirsten Heiberg Kirsten Heiberg (25 April 1907 – 2 March 1976) was a Norwegian/German actress and singer who had a major film career in Germany between 1938 and 1954. She reached the peak of her career in 1942-43, performing in Joseph Goebbels version of ""Titanic"". After the war she was given a two-year ban by the Allies due to her role in the Nazi propaganda. In Norway she was never punished, as she was a German citizen. Heiberg grew up in the towns Kragerø, Kongsberg and Oslo, and studied in Lausanne, Dijon and Paris. Later, she studied English in Oxford,"
"Olive Fremstad Olive Fremstad (14 March 1871 – 21 April 1951) was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American opera diva who sang in both the mezzo-soprano and soprano ranges. Born in Stockholm, she was adopted by an American couple living in Minnesota, taking on their surname of Fremstad. She received her early education and musical training in Christiania, Norway. When she was 12 years of age her parents moved to America, settling in Minneapolis. Even before leaving Christiania, her progress on the piano had been such that she had appeared as an infant prodigy. She began"
"the lower drawer of the dressing room chest of drawers of the young Kirsten Flagstad. The family moved to Argentina, then New York City, where her father died at age 35 in 1924. Two years later her mother married tenor Fortunato de Angelis and the family settled in New Jersey. Varnay had been studying to be a pianist but decided at age eighteen to become a singer and had intensive vocal lessons with her mother. A year later, Flagstad arranged for her to start preparing roles with Metropolitan Opera staff conductor and coach Hermann Weigert (1890–1955). By the age of"
"Turid Karlsen Turid Karlsen (born 1961) is a Norwegian operatic soprano and voice teacher who has had an active international performing career since the 1980s. Known for her portrayals of roles from the dramatic soprano repertoire, she won the Kirsten Flagstad Prize in 2004 for her portrayal of Senta in Richard Wagner's ""Der Fliegende Holländer"" with the Norwegian National Opera. During her career, she has performed under the batons of several notable conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Dennis Russell Davies, Placido Domingo, Hartmut Haenchen, Kent Nagano, and Michael Tilson Thomas. She is currently a professor of vocal music at the Hochschule"
"years in Norway. In London she appeared as Dido (another recently learnt role) in Purcell's ""Dido and Aeneas"" at the Mermaid Theatre (in the 1951 Festival of Britain season): the portrayal was recorded (in studio), and issued by EMI in January 1953 (see: Recordings). Her last operatic appearance was as Dido in Oslo on June 5, 1953. During the post-war years, Flagstad was also responsible for the world premiere of Richard Strauss's ""Four Last Songs"". Strauss had written the pieces during his exile in Switzerland following the war (like Flagstad, he had been vilified as a collaborator with the Nazis)."
"Oslo within a musical family; her father Michael Flagstad was a conductor and her mother Maja Flagstad a pianist. She received her early musical training in Oslo and made her stage debut at the National Theatre in Oslo as Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's ""Tiefland"" in 1913. Her first recordings were made between 1913 and 1915. After further study in Stockholm with Dr. Gillis Bratt, she pursued a career in opera and operetta in Norway. In 1919, she married her first husband Sigurd Hall and a year later gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Else Marie Hall. Later that"
"year she signed up with the newly created Opera Comique in Oslo, under the direction of Alexander Varnay and Benno Singer. Varnay was the father of the famous soprano Astrid Varnay. Her ability to learn roles quickly was noted, as it often took her only a few days to do so. She sang Desdemona opposite Leo Slezak, Minnie, Amelia and other lesser roles at the Opera Comique. She sang at the Stora Teatern of Gothenburg, Sweden, between 1928 and 1934. Flagstad made her debut there singing Agathe in ""Der Freischütz"" by Weber. In 1930, a revival of Nielsen's ""Saul and"
"major roles were as Amor in Christoph Willibald Gluck's ""Orfeo ed Euridice"" (Central Theater, 1933) and Giuiletta in Jacques Offenbach's ""The Tales of Hoffmann"" (National Theatre, 1938) under the direction of Olav Kielland. Flagstad traveled abroad and sang on American radio. On the German stage, she played Salome in Richard Strauss's opera of the same name, and Ariadne in his ""Ariadne auf Naxos"". She was married to the Austrian pianist Johann Crkal (1891–1939) and she performed in Italy and France as Karen Maria Crkal, first as a guest together with her sister as Brünnhilde at La Scala as Ortlinde in"
"Isolde"" in a concert at Neuschwanstein Castle with the Stuttgart Philharmonic. She went on to sing the role in staged productions in 2009 at the Bielefeld Opera and the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. The following are roles Karlsen has created on stage: The following are works Karlsen has performed with major symphony orchestras: Turid Karlsen Turid Karlsen (born 1961) is a Norwegian operatic soprano and voice teacher who has had an active international performing career since the 1980s. Known for her portrayals of roles from the dramatic soprano repertoire, she won the Kirsten Flagstad Prize in 2004 for her portrayal of"
"Birgitte Grimstad Birgitte Grimstad (born 15 December 1935) is a Danish-born Norwegian singer, guitarist, composer and writer. Grimstad was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the daughter of Aksel Schiøtz and Gerd Haugsted. She was married to ambassador Per Øystein Grimstad from 1958 to 1988. Grimstad studied theatre and mass media at the University of Minnesota, United States. She moved to Norway in 1959, and produced television shows for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), including children's programs and shows with performers such as Alf Prøysen and Lalla Carlsen. She made her musical debut in 1966 with the single ""Det første som jeg"
"with both marriages ending in divorce, and also lived for some time in a couple with her secretary, Mary Watkins Cushing. She died in Irvington, New York. She was buried, however, alongside her parents in a family plot in the village cemetery in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. Fremstad was the model for Thea Kronborg, the heroine of Willa Cather's novel ""The Song of the Lark"". Her relationship with Cushing was fictionalized in the novel ""Of Lena Geyer"", by Marcia Davenport. Olive Fremstad Olive Fremstad (14 March 1871 – 21 April 1951) was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American"
"the Lindeman Foundation and the Norwegian Society for Soloists. The first two competitions in 1988 and 1992 were organized for pianists. Marking the centenary of the birth of Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad in 1995, the competition has since then been arranged for singers. Until 2007 national competitions were arranged prior to the international competition. The competition is currently arranged every two years in cooperation with the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The competition usually receives between 200-250 applications from singers from around the world. The invited singers are usually newly"
"complete stereophonic set of the Ring Cycle, released by Decca on LP and reel-to-reel tape. She also spent time mentoring young singers in her native country, including contralto Eva Gustavson. From around 1952, when she gave her Met farewell, until her death 10 years later, Flagstad's health steadily deteriorated. She was in and out of hospitals on an increasing basis both in the number and the length of her stays for a variety of ailments. She even joked with an interviewer in 1958 that Oslo hospital had become her home away from home. From 1958 to 1960, Flagstad was the"
"to provide the accompaniment. By the time of the premiere on 22 May 1950 at London's Royal Albert Hall, Flagstad was almost 55 years old. Her voice by this point was darker, heavier, and more inflexible than when she had sung for Strauss at Bayreuth, and she was becoming reluctant to venture above the stave, as would be notoriously demonstrated in the recording of ""Tristan und Isolde"" two years later; the Strauss songs, particularly the Hesse settings, were thus not ideally suited to her resources, and she found herself tested to her limits. ""Frühling"" indeed, gave such trouble that Legge,"
"had made his Covent Garden debut in the title role of ""Lohengrin"". He also sang at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Herold was a prominent interpreter of Pedro in Eugen d'Albert's ""Tiefland"" during the years following its premiere, with the composer himself pronouncing him as ideal in the role. (""Sie sind das Ideal eines Pedro."") He also sang Pedro in the 1913 Oslo performance of ""Tiefland"" which marked Kirsten Flagstad's stage debut. It was in ""Tiefland"" that Herold made his final appearance on the opera stage on March 19, 1915, his 50th birthday. However, he has left no recordings"
"Nina Stemme Nina Maria Stemme (born Nina Maria Thöldte on May 11, 1963) is a Swedish dramatic soprano opera singer. Stemme ""is regarded by today's opera fans as our era's greatest Wagnerian soprano"". In 2010, Michael Kimmelman wrote of one of Stemme's performances in Richard Wagner's opera ""Die Walküre"", ""As for Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme sang gloriously. It's hard to recall anyone's sounding more commanding or at ease in the part, and that includes Kirsten Flagstad"". Born in Stockholm, the young Stemme played piano and viola. She attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School (Swedish: Adolf Fredriks Musikklasser), a high-profile song-and-chorus school in"
"cryptic cablegrams from her husband, who had returned to Norway a year and a half earlier, Flagstad was forced to consider leaving the United States in 1941. Though dismissing the political implications of the departure of someone of her fame from the United States to German-occupied Norway, it was nonetheless a difficult decision for her. She had many friends, colleagues, and of course many fans all over the US. Even more importantly, her 20-year-old daughter Else had married an American named Arthur Dusenberry and was living with her new husband on a dude ranch in Bozeman, Montana. It was Edwin"
"Kirsti Sparboe Kirsti Sparboe was born on 7 December 1946 in Tromsø, Norway. She is a musical performer and an actress. Most of her musical career has been built on participation in the widely popular Eurovision Song Contest. Her first participation in the Eurovision Song Contest was in 1965 when she was 18, with the song ""Karusell"", which came in 13th place. She then participated in the 1966 Norwegian pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, with the song ""Gi Meg Fri"", which came in 2nd. In 1967, her song ""Dukkemann"" came in 14th place at Eurovision. She also participated in"
"found her true voice. Ellen Gulbranson, a Swedish soprano at Bayreuth, persuaded Winifred Wagner to audition Flagstad for the Bayreuth Festival. Flagstad sang minor roles in 1933, but at the next season in 1934, she sang the roles of Sieglinde in ""Die Walküre"" and Gutrune in ""Götterdämmerung"" at the Festival, opposite Frida Leider as Brünnhilde. Flagstad was first noticed by Otto Hermann Kahn, then Chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, on a trip to Scandinavia in 1929, and Met management made overtures soon after. Their letters were never answered, however. At the time, Flagstad had just met her"
"the occupation that involved his lumber business. This arrest, together with her decision to remain in occupied Norway, made her unpopular, particularly in the United States. The Norwegian ambassador and columnist Walter Winchell spoke out against her. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that after his death it was revealed that during the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and held for eight days. Also, one of Johansen's sons by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian"
"an opera singer at the age of fourteen the 31 May 1787 at the Royal Swedish Opera in the role of Yngve in ""Frigga"". Her following performance in ""Gustav Adolf and Ebba Brahe"" by king Gustav III of Sweden, she was favorably noted by the king (also the author of the play) and formally engaged at the Opera. The same year, she was in parallel engaged as a stage actress at the newly founded Swedish language Ristell Theatre in Bollhuset. When the Ristell theater was transformed to become the Royal Dramatic Theatre (1788), she became a member of its pioneer"
"Anni-Frid Lyngstad Anni-Frid Synni, Dowager Princess Reuss of Plauen (; née Lyngstad, born 15 November 1945) is a Norwegian-Swedish singer, songwriter, and environmentalist. She is best known as one of the lead singers of the Swedish pop band ABBA. Born in Ballangen to a Norwegian mother and a German father, she grew up in Torshälla, and started her first solo career there, as a jazz singer in 1967, through a talent competition called ""New Faces"". She won the competition with her song, ""En ledig dag"", leading to a television appearance on ""Hylands Hörna"" on Dagen-H; as a result, she was"
"1948, with Set Svanholm as Tristan, Viorica Ursuleac as Brangäne, Hans Hotter as Kurwenal, and Ludwig Weber as Marke, conducted by Erich Kleiber. Two live concerts are of particular historical significance: In 1956, she moved to Decca where in the autumn of her career further important studio recordings followed: Almost to the end of her life, Flagstad continued to sing in fine voice, although she increasingly sang mezzo-soprano material or in a mezzo range: besides the ""Rheingold"" Fricka (a mezzo role), Decca planned to cast her also as the ""Walkure"" Fricka and the ""Gotterdammerung"" Waltraute for its complete Ring (in"
"all her regular Wagnerian roles, including Kundry and Sieglinde. She toured South America in 1948 and returned to San Francisco in 1949, and finally returned to the Met. In the 1950-1951 season, although she was aged well into her 50s, Flagstad showed herself still in remarkable form as Isolde, Brünnhilde and Leonore. Despite the great fanfare surrounding her return to the Met in early 1951, and her success in resuming her roles there, Flagstad decided that it would be her final year singing Wagner on the stage. She had gained quite a bit of weight since her pre-war years at"
"Astrid Folstad Astrid Borgny Folstad (31 May 1932 – 21 January 2009) was a Norwegian actress. She was educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Theatre from 1953 to 1956. She made her debut at the National Theatre in 1955, and was employed at Det Norske Teatret from 1956 to 1959 and at the National Theatre from 1959. She had ninety parts in total before retiring in 2003. She also appeared in several films and television series, including ""Kristin Lavransdatter"". From 1970 to 1986 she was a teacher at the Norwegian National Academy of Theatre. She was married to fellow"
"now available on CD reissues, readily attest. Florence Austral Florence Austral (26 April 1892 – 15 May 1968) was an Australian operatic soprano renowned for her interpretation of the most demanding Wagnerian female roles, although she never gained the opportunity to appear at the Bayreuth Festival or the New York Metropolitan Opera. She was born Florence Mary Wilson, but adopted the professional surname Austral in 1921 in honour of her homeland of Australia. She was considered to have few equals in sheer vocal quality until the arrival of Kirsten Flagstad. Acting was not her strong point and her characterisations were"
"Christoffer Christian Karsten Christoffer Christian (or Kristofer Kristian) Karsten (9 September 1756 – 6 August 1827) was a Swedish opera singer. He was the maternal grandfather of the ballerina Marie Taglioni. Born in Ystad, he was discovered by queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia in 1771, when he sang for her on her way to her visit to Berlin, and so impressed her that she gave him the opportunity to study singing in Stockholm. In 1773 he debuted at the Royal Swedish Opera in Bollhuset with Carl Stenborg and Elisabeth Olin in the famous opera performance ""Thetis och Phelée"". He was"
"Kate Augestad Kate Elisabeth Augestad (born 1956) is a Norwegian vocalist known from bands like Johnny Banan Band and Program 81/82, and the mother of mezzo-soprano, vocalist, actress and conductor Tora Augestad (b. 1979). Augestad was born in Bergen. After her singing career, she became Assistant Professor at University of Bergen, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, and ""Handelshøyskolen BI"" in Bergen. She has also appeared as an actor at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen. Augestad and Lasse Myrvold (1953–2006) were lead vocalists in the band ""Johnny Banan Band"", which later became The Aller Værste!. They were among the"
"Lisbeth Balslev Lisbeth Balslev (born 21 February 1945) is a Danish operatic soprano with an international career, especially in Wagnerian operas. Balslev was born in Aabenraa and originally trained as a nurse. She then studied singing, first at the Academy of Music and Music Communication in Esbjerg, then at the opera academy of the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. In 1976, she made her debut at the Royal Danish Theater as Yaroslavna in ""Prince Igor"". After two years, Balslev left the Royal Danish Theater and had her international breakthrough as Senta in Harry Kupfer's staging of Wagner's ""Der fliegende Holländer"""
"Lisbeth Balslev Lisbeth Balslev (born 21 February 1945) is a Danish operatic soprano with an international career, especially in Wagnerian operas. Balslev was born in Aabenraa and originally trained as a nurse. She then studied singing, first at the Academy of Music and Music Communication in Esbjerg, then at the opera academy of the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. In 1976, she made her debut at the Royal Danish Theater as Yaroslavna in ""Prince Igor"". After two years, Balslev left the Royal Danish Theater and had her international breakthrough as Senta in Harry Kupfer's staging of Wagner's ""Der fliegende Holländer"""
"underground throughout the war. Flagstad eventually returned to the Metropolitan Opera, invited by its new general manager, Rudolf Bing, who was furiously criticized for this choice: ""The greatest soprano of this century must sing in the world's greatest opera house"", he replied. She also returned to Covent Garden following its reopening in 1947 (a rare exception - the Opera House, in lean financial straits following the war-time closure, was attempting to build up a house company of English nationals, principally singing in English, in preference to expensive guest stars). In four consecutive seasons from 1948 to 1952, she sang in"
"actor Knut Risan. She resided at Høvik. Astrid Folstad Astrid Borgny Folstad (31 May 1932 – 21 January 2009) was a Norwegian actress. She was educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Theatre from 1953 to 1956. She made her debut at the National Theatre in 1955, and was employed at Det Norske Teatret from 1956 to 1959 and at the National Theatre from 1959. She had ninety parts in total before retiring in 2003. She also appeared in several films and television series, including ""Kristin Lavransdatter"". From 1970 to 1986 she was a teacher at the Norwegian National Academy"
"and would not agree to sing the whole opera. To capture as much of her Wagner as she was willing to record, Culshaw produced separate sets of parts of the opera in 1957. Act 1 was conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch with Flagstad in the role of Sieglinde; in the other set the ""Todesverkundigung"" scene from Act 2 and the whole of Act 3 were conducted by Solti with Flagstad as Brünnhilde. In those early years of stereo, Culshaw worked with Pierre Monteux in recordings of Stravinsky and Ravel, and with Solti in a recording of Richard Strauss's ""Arabella"". He also"